How to convert a string to lower or upper case in Ruby

Question

How do I take a string and convert it to lower or upper case in Ruby?

Answer 1

Ruby has a few methods for changing the case of strings. To convert to lowercase, use downcase:

"hello James!".downcase    #=> "hello james!"

Similarly, upcase capitalizes every letter and capitalize capitalizes the first letter of the string but lowercases the rest:

"hello James!".upcase      #=> "HELLO JAMES!"
"hello James!".capitalize  #=> "Hello james!"
"hello James!".titleize    #=> "Hello James!" (Rails/ActiveSupport only)

If you want to modify a string in place, you can add an exclamation point to any of those methods:

string = "hello James!"
string.downcase!
string   #=> "hello james!"

Refer to the documentation for String for more information.

Answer 2

You can find out all the methods available on a String by opening irb and running:

"MyString".methods.sort

And for a list of the methods available for strings in particular:

"MyString".own_methods.sort

I use this to find out new and interesting things about objects which I might not otherwise have known existed.

Answer 3

Like @endeR mentioned, if internationalization is a concern, the unicode_utils gem is more than adequate.

$ gem install unicode_utils
$ irb
> require 'unicode_utils'
=> true
> UnicodeUtils.downcase("FEN BİLİMLERİ", :tr)
=> "fen bilimleri"

---

String manipulations in Ruby 2.4 are now unicode-sensitive.

Answer 4

The ruby downcase method returns a string with its uppercase letters replaced by lowercase letters.

"string".downcase

https://ruby-doc.org/core-2.1.0/String.html#method-i-downcase